>What I mostly meant, is that you can't really have advanced "middle
>age" cultures brushing shoulders with bronze age or early iron age
>peoples. The more advanced people would conquer the lesser without
>effort. That's why I don't like treating the westeners as middleage
>christians in full plate armor and lace wielding heavy cavalry. They would
>have walked all over the other inhabitants of Genertela a long time ago.
If you put them all together on a big battlefield and don't let them use magic, possibly. However, on Glorantha, there are several reasons why this doesn't happen. Most of the more advanced cultures are geographically or culturally isolated from the less advanced ones. The Closing contributed to the isolation, as did the Syndic's Ban in the West. Most of these cultures didn't rediscover each other until VERY recently, so the highly-advanced weapons cultures wouldn't have had as much opportunity to overcome the lesser-developed cultures. Even so, don't overestimate the effort required for "advanced" cultures to triumph over the less-advanced ones; ask Suetonius about the fun he had dealing with Boadicea, and ask Varus about the easy time he had in the Teutoburgerwald. The Romans never DID conquer Germania, after all, and they were both technologically advanced and well trained and organized.
Magic is also a potent factor in Glorantha, possibly a more important factor than armor and weaponry; the latter are certainly downplayed in Hero Wars. Strategy and tactics would also be a potent element, but again,divination, spirits, etc., tend to level the playing field. Berserkers, heroforming, thaumatactics, etc. are all important to Gloranthan warfare, and were not present amongst real-world cultures (at least not as they are portrayed in Glorantha).
Take a look at the forces that are operating in Glorantha. Plenty of factorshave an impact in Glorantha that don't have any parallells in the real world, and that makes the difference. You seem to be playing up the role of technology and discounting the very real power of Gloranthan myth and magic.
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